Songs for While I'm Away

Phil Lynott was a black Irish rock star at a time when this was a decidedly unlikely thing to be, who sadly died young after developing an addication to drugs. At the start of this documentary, his family express their wish for a film that celebrates his life, rather than glamourising his death. And 'Songs for While I'm Away' does that, albeit at the price of becoming something of a hagiography. We're told about Lynott's talent, charisma and (away from the stage) shyness. But just about everything that went wrong (the breakup of his various band lineups and relationships, and his eventual dependency on heroin) is glossed over. Things happened, we're told, with an air of inevitability; but how they did so is not covered in any detail. The result is an imbalanced portrait, which makes it hard to understand exactly why he was one of those who didn't make it in the end. A bit more frankness would not have gone amiss.